“Would you like to watch a film with me tonight?” Although the timing seems good – it has just gone 8pm – the offer is extraordinary. You see, in the busy Dabbs household, each member of the family works to his or her own barely compatible calendar and so it is mandatory to book in advance before any interaction can take place …

COMMENTS

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Most UIs are crap

Well put Mr Dabbs, the time settings on all these devices is much harder than it needs to be. Two simple HH and MM buttons for instance. And a decent capacitor that can hold the clock chips power for an hour might cost all of 50 cents and save so much blasphemy. And why is only a monophonic beep all that these monstrosities produce.? How about different tones for each control button ?

Re: Most UIs are crap

I have an oven that has three different tones for the timer alarm. Two of them are inaudible when you're more than a metre from the oven, and the other one's not much chop either.

The button that cycles through the tones is also used to set the timer, so you never know whether you're going to hear your dinner burning. I've resorted to using the microwave timer's monophonic beep because I recognise it.

Re: Most UIs are crap

Re: Most UIs are crap

And why is only a monophonic beep all that these monstrosities produce.? How about different tones for each control button ?

NOOOOO. "No flaming beep at all" is the one and only setting I would like on electric and electronic devices. The benefit of machines vs people is that they don't get impatient - until some UI designer tw*t gets it in his otherwise empty head that it must beep because of safety or feedback or whatever else excuse is dreamt up to break out the most piercing piezo they can find and. make. it. beep. every. &%ç*. minute. after. it. has. done. what. I bought. it. for as if it is an attention craving teenager with a presentation problem.

Personally I would convict these people to a week in a room with enough beeping devices tuned to harmonic resonance with each other and the teeth of the designer to be re-educated, ending by sticking at least 20 of these preferably sharp edged infernal piezo buzzers where they will be remembered most before release.

It has gotten so bad that checking access to the wires of any built-in beepers is now a standard part of my procurement process. The only thing that should beep is a fire alarm. Full stop. May the designers of all other f(bleep)ng devices be struck with diarrhoea and a heavy cough at the same time.

Re: @AC, 17:16 - Most UIs are crap

I've got a phone that locks the screen as soon as you press the "unlock" button when in call mode to prevent accidental ear touch button presses. Only problem is, it makes dialing a machine impossible.

Re: Power Cuts

"I resolve the microwave issue by not bothering. We don't use it as a clock so I don't see the point. "

Two reasons: On present and last ovens, the beggars won't work without the time being set after a power interruption. And second, even if it will work unset, yu've got either a malignantly flashing display, or the wrong time forever telling you that you weren't clever enough to set a clock.

A pity that device makers don't build in MSF signal receivers (if Casio can do this on a thirty quid watch, no reason that a £100-£600 appliance shouldn't have it).

Re: Power Cuts

I resolve the microwave issue by not bothering.

I'm borderline OCD (was full on OCD for a brief period). Used to be hell having to reset all the electronic gadgets with clocks after a power outage. Then I got a mains power monitor, and became obsessive about switching stuff off at the wall when not in use. As a result, my microwave is only flashing "00:00" on the rare occasions it's being used.

Current obessession is waging war on the molluscs in our garden by collecting the slimy sods and drowing them in bleachy water. One of these days a neighbour's going to call the police about the shadowy figure with a flashlight rooting about in my garden at 11pm every night ...

Re: Power Cuts

Lay a trail of glue, then sprinkle salt over it. Snails won't cross it. Obviously no good in areas exposed to water or weather, but a handy way to keep them from crawling into the water-butt hole or up the air vents.

Re: Power Cuts

For a brief moment, I felt like I held the world's most powerful remote control in my hand.

Some years ago in Belfast one of my colleagues had just plugged in a new PC, and as he clicked the switch on the 13A socket a hefty and unexpected carbomb went off just down the road. He came out of the office as white as a sheet...

Re: Power Cuts

"Current obessession is waging war on the molluscs in our garden by collecting the slimy sods and drowing them in bleachy water. One of these days a neighbour's going to call the police about the shadowy figure with a flashlight rooting about in my garden at 11pm every night ..."

Nah - just another gardener and mollusc hater. You are in good company. Snails are usually treated to the Dropkick of Destiny, while slugs get the Heel of Justice.

Re: Power Cuts

"For a brief moment, I felt like I held the world's most powerful remote control in my hand."

A few weeks back, I was having an unpleasant motorway drive, though driving rain. I was relieved to reach my junction but the traffic lights at the end of the slip road turned red to spite me. I called to the great god Bollocks, who obliged with a lightning bolt which took out all the traffic lights. I smiled in thanks.

Re: Power Cuts

As a teenager I repaired our old TV - and my mother was very nervous about anything electrical. As I plugged it back into the mains there was a loud rumble - and a cloud of smoke went heavenwards from the large 11KV distribution centre in the next street. My mother took some convincing that it wasn't my fault until she read in the newspaper about the errant bird in the switchgear.

Re: Power Cuts

In the middle of an electrical engineering lecture, the prof (Roger Jennison*, at UKC circa October 1988 for anyone else who remembers) was demonstrating nodes and antinodes in AC circuits - and at the exact moment he did so, the power went out over the whole city for several hours.

I'm still convinced he had something to do with it...

*Quite a character, even has his own Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Clifton_Jennison

@a cynic writes... Re: Power Cuts

Let me know what model you have, it sounds handy. My microwave and cooker refuse to work at all unless you got through the entire ritual of setting time, date, and what colour socks you wear.

I live in a rural area which has many brief power cuts, like 2-3 seconds, twice a week. I have raised it with the suppliers and they say that the breakers, after a short circuit such as overhead wires touching in wind, reset automatically. Although this happens at any time in all weather.

After each such cut I have to spend about 15 minutes resetting central heating, computers, router, cooker, and microwave. I read the suppliers "customer charter" and it is all about length of power cut, as if the only things that matter are the lights and making tea. They do not see a 2 second drop-out as a problem.

Re: Power Cuts

The other option is to very carefully select your microwave oven not to have a clock. I am resigned to having to set the time on the oven but every other clock in my house either knows how to get the time from a radio signal or is now in the bin.

Re: Power Cuts

For a brief moment, I felt like I held the world's most powerful remote control in my hand.

I had almost exactly the same experience. Had not read in the local rag that the council were going to switch off the streetlights. Went out to walk the dog at 10 seconds to midnight and tripped on my extension lead on the path - and all the lights in the town went out!

Re: @a cynic writes... Power Cuts

My microwave is a Panasonic,the only thing on the front is "Inverter system". Can't be bothered to pull it out to look on the back, but it's 8-10 years old so it's not like you could buy the same model.

If the power drops for a 10th of a second you get 88:88, but if you just go ahead and use it the clock feature is turned off. No wrong time, no flashing.

Re: Power Cuts

"Even if it will work unset, you've got either a malignantly flashing display, or the wrong time forever telling you that you weren't clever enough to set a clock."

Microwaves are great for heating (some) things, but rubbish for anything close to proper cooking. So on a manically busy microwave week, we'll use ours for all of 15 minutes (cooking frozen veg, warming tortillas and similar). On a slow week it's lucky if it sees 15 seconds of use to defrost a little butter. So (like lots of other gear in our kitchen that doesn't get much use), it only gets turned on at the socket when it's needed. No blinking; no wrong time. And no guilt.

I have to admit, though, that I still have an indecent number of candles and holders readily accessible. And will do for the foreseeable future. Torches. phones and so forth are great for finding your way around the dark areas of the house, but you want light in whatever room(s) you settle in - and half a dozen well placed candles can make for a very pleasant environment.

Re: Power Cuts

"I think the worst clock UI I have to deal with is my car radio and daylight saving time."

So that's one hugely over-priced piece of radio receiving equipment that can't pick up the time automatically. Check!

Another bug-bear is surely the clock on a distressingly larger number of low-end mobile phones. Hey guys! You're plugged into the world's largest network, almost certainly with a primitive TCP/IP software stack already written and loaded (for your overpriced data options). How hard can it be?

Re: Not so much

Re: Not so much

> UPSs? That's why we've got laptops!

But UPSs are for so much more than computers!

They also run LCD/LED TVs, Sky boxes, lights, WiFi+routers and most other things that don't have switch-on surges or excessive power requirements. Plus, they generally have spike/surge protection, so they keep your precious gear safe from the nasties that can happen when the power does come back, or only fails for a second or two.

Re: Not so much

Every time the power goes here (not too often, but often enough), I have to explain to Mrs Dan 55 why I've just flipped the circuit breaker switch to 'off' and am waiting to see the neighbours lights going on before flipping the circuit breaker switch to 'on' again. Perhaps I should just buy a UPS and be done with it.

Re: Not so much

I used to have a lovely surround sound system with enough inputs on the back for 2 consoles, Sky box and DVD player. Until a power cut surged the main board on it and resulted in full surround sound white noise ever after :(

To make it worse they no longer make those models and I've never found another manufacturer that does...

Re: Not so much

Re: Not so much

The UPS daemon on my Debian box does a monthly battery test for 5 seconds. I had enough power to get to the power company's website and report the outage. It was an amazingly simple one-click affair, as they used my service address to figure out where it was.

Our oven clock is a PITA to set, but for some reason the oven won't work at all (i.e. won't get hot) unless the clock is set.

So the procedure after a power loss is to mash all the buttons for long enough until it shows some sort of time (what exactly doesn't matter, we don't ever look at the clock) and then the thing will actually start cooking food.